Looking forward to participating in this upcoming (Oct. 26) Harvard colloquium on the work of the great Africanist Joseph Miller of UVA, spearheaded by my wonderful new MIT colleague Kenda Mutongi. You can find the final program at this link and also just below:

1. I am playing tennis at the local clay courts with a friend, whose family comes from subcontinent. Four Caucasian males on the court next to us are finishing a doubles match. One of said males, with whom I had been chatting earlier (but whom I had met only that morning), tells me as he is preparing to leave the court that “at least you guys don’t need sunscreen.”

2. About an hour later, I am driving my son and one of his friends home from another friend’s birthday. I strike up a conversation with my son and his friend about — what else? — the Fortnite craze taking over our nation (see, e.g., this apologia). I ask my son’s friend what his favorite skin is. (In Fortnite, a “skin” is a costume or outfit that you can buy to dress up your combatant in the game.) Answer: “white.” (I did a quick check to confirm that in fact Fornite does not actually market “white” skins per se — which one could be excused for thinking might actually be a possibility in this day and age.)

Some context: I live in Newton, which is an overwhelmingly white, generally prosperous town. If you haven’t had a chance yet to read the superb Boston Globe series “Boston. Racism. Image. Reality,” by the Globe‘s legendary Spotlight team, do yourself a favor and read it. As journalism goes I thought it was among the most probing series of articles I have read on this topic, and for Boston area residents it is an eye opener. For example, the story by Andrew Ryan on the Seaport district really shows persuasively how the combination of real estate developers intent on creating an “upscale” neighborhood, a tendency to revert to a handful of big players in the construction industry instead of reaching out to minority-led firms, and a city government unable to exert any real influence over the development process despite massive public investment in the district has created possibly the least diverse neighborhood in greater Boston And the series reveals any number of other disturbing, even shocking factoids, e.g.: the median net worth for whites in the metropolitan Boston area is nearly $250,000, but a mere $8 for African-Americans. (I too had to read that one twice to make sure I read it correctly.) For those of us in the higher education business, the article on the relatively small enrollment of African-American students at Boston area colleges is particularly disturbing. Some of the demographic and economic figures highlighted in the series have not changed greatly since the Globe did an earlier, similar investigation into race and racism in Boston in 1983.

So the entire series, as well as the 1983 reports (not easily tracked down, alas) are worth a close look. I used it this semester in a course I teach on “Race, Crime, and Citizenship in American Law” and I will almost certainly do so again. Back in March, I had the chance to sit down with two of the journalists who worked on the series (Ryan and Adrian Walker) along with their editor Patricia Wen, in the form of a panel conversation at the annual meeting of the Kendall Square Association (whose new president, C.A. Webb, is fabulous and has a real commitment to this issue). One of the attendees made the point that Andrew Ryan’s story about the Seaport district could also have been written about Kendall Square. The KSA has organized a series of small group followup dialogues among its members to continue the March 29 discussion.

The Spotlight series made me feel quite differently about what it means to live in the Boston area. I still love this city, but I understand better now why so many people continue to find it difficult to call Boston home.

A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege to participate in one of the most interesting and important dialogues I have been involved in as a historian. The occasion was the second of a series of forums on the “MIT and Slavery” project, an investigation of MIT’s relationship to slavery that MIT’s President Rafael Reif commissioned at the end of last academic year. The project has been spearheaded by my colleague Craig Wilder, who had the brilliant idea of creating an undergraduate research seminar (along with MIT archivist Nora Murphy) to undertake the investigation. The first forum in the series featured Craig and Nora as well as T.A. Claire Kim and a genuinely spectacular cohort of undergrads, who spoke on that day with a composure and degree of insight one would expect to see from an advanced historian (video here). The second forum, in which I was joined by Craig and MIT SHASS Dean Melissa Nobles as well as historians Tanalís Padilla and Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, was a follow-up response to questions from the MIT community about the purpose of studying this chapter of MIT’s past. The panel opened up onto a broader discussion of “the power of historical knowledge to make a better world,” from which I learned a great deal (not least by way of the lively Q&A with the audience that followed). A video recording of the event can be found here, and a news summary here. The event was organized by Emily Hiestand of the MIT SHASS Dean’s office.

Looking forward to visiting Yale’s Early Modern Empires Workshop Feb. 5 for discussion of “‘Our Crown and Glory’: The Jesuits, the Souls of Slaves, and the Struggle for Haiti” — the penultimate chapter of my book on the revolt against the Indies Company in Haiti, 1720-1725.

The Black Students’ Union at MIT is hosting a conversation on April 22, from 2-4pm, entitled “What does Black Lives Matter have to do with YOU?” at the Stratton Student Center, Mezzanine Lounge (W20-307). Please attend if you can and share with interested folks.

The next meeting of the American Society for Legal History will be held in Las Vegas from Oct. 26-29, 2017. The deadline for panel and paper proposals has been extended to April 3. Please consider submitting a proposal, especially if you have not yet participated in an ASLH meeting. The CFP is here. Some financial assistance is available for participants, especially graduate students, who need funding support in order to attend.

From Jean-François Niort in Guadeloupe, this call for papers (in French) for what looks to be a very important conference in March 2015 on the law of slavery and the slave trade; proposals due by October 30, 2014.

For those in the Boston area on Feb. 27, here’s a nice image of a panel I will be doing at Brandeis that afternoon/evening on “The Limits of Revolution” with Chris Brown, Suzanne Desan, and myself. The panel is part of the Brandeis Sawyer Seminar Rethinking the Age of Revolution (directed by Jane Kamensky and Sue Lanser with their fabulous postdoc fellow Julia Gaffield):